Unaltered Photographs

Comment

Comment by Elizabeth StGermain on January 7, 2011 at 12:00pm

Comment by nathan mccreery on January 2, 2011 at 6:53am

I agree with Kam on this one.  It seems to me that when you create a group you need to drop in at least once in awhile.  Being a moderator means you should moderate some.  No-one has at this point given a rationale for the group.

Comment by Will James on December 21, 2010 at 7:00pm

Lunar eclipse, Taken early this morning (3 AM) - no editing

Comment by Will James on December 21, 2010 at 6:58pm

Comment by nathan mccreery on November 23, 2010 at 7:48am

"How long will it be before the artistry of the person who does the processing becomes more important than the person behind the lens?" A good question indeed. However, the person doing the printing has been more important than the person behind the camera for many years. Very few photographers, especially those who work in color, printed, or even gave instructions to the person doing the printing. In commercial photography it's very understandable, since we had to produce, in many cases literally hundreds of photographs per day. If the photographer printed all of his own work in commercial portrait studio the photographer would photograph all day and print photographs all night and pray for the weekend! However, in fine art photography, it is important that the photographer do all of the work, and that is practical, since the volume of work is much lower. However, most of the color photography that was done by these photographers, especially what we saw at arts and crafts shows was commercially produced. I have always been uncomfortable with that process. However, taking a photograph into Photo-shop on my desktop computer is not much different in character from what I also do in the darkroom. By the way, I've been compositing photographs for years in a conventional darkroom, as have several others, and the result is indistinguishable from a single exposure photograph unless you know what to look for, and where.

Comment by John Vogler on November 23, 2010 at 7:33am

Such interesting discussions about unaltered photographs, I had to join the group. I am a bit uncomfortable about the use of increasingly sophisticated programs for processing my images. Even with the simplest software, it is possible to make the trees greener, and the water bluer than what I saw when I took the shot. With better software I can combine multiple images, and produce a photograph of a scene that previously was done in the field using the careful manipulation of filters. How long will it be before the artistry of the person who does the processing becomes more important than the person behind the lens? As imaging processing becomes even more sophisticated, will a person be able to use elements of different photographs and copyright his creation without even owning a camera?

Comment by nathan mccreery on October 31, 2010 at 10:28am

I've been thinking about "unaltered photographs". For me putting up a photograph directly out of the camera with no further creative expression, is analogous to what we used to call a contact sheet, or contact proof. The objective of the contact proof was to make a proof print in either black and white or color that would let us know what was in the negative, and often it would allow us to make printing decisions about the negative before we actually began printing. Most photographers were reluctant to show the contact proofs to anyone, because they were an incomplete expression. In fact, not an expression at all but merely an analytical exercise. For me, the digital files that I have downloaded to either Light Room or PS are exactly the same as that. The only time I can think of, in classical photography, that a raw photograph (not camera RAW but the image directly from a neg) is in the process of platinum and palladium printing when burning and dodging etc are impractical. I am still wanting someone to give me the rationale behind an unaltered photograph. Why is it more virtuous than a photograph that has been brought to a different level of expression by the process of burning and dodging, changing local contrast or correcting a goofy color balance?

Comment by Linda Schendel on October 30, 2010 at 7:25am

I think this is what happened to summer here in Indiana.

Comment by Kristen Barrera on October 27, 2010 at 4:51pm

Nathan,
Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed your gallery. The majority of your shots are beyond beautiful. I hope someday to be able to produce images like those. I get close with some but it is a rarity.

Comment by nathan mccreery on October 26, 2010 at 4:35pm

When you think about that time, take a look at my gallery here. I'm one of those guys. Until very recently all of my work in color as well as black and white was hand printed. It has only been recently that the color material to print color became hard to get ( almost impossible to get) that I began using digital scans to produce my color work. All of the work there, with a few exceptions, were produced using film.

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